Dear Family and Friends, April 8, 2013 at 2:12 p.m. (EDT)
This week was fantastic! I was on exchanges much of the week due to a training that Elder Smith had to go to and Zone Leader exchanges.
On Monday and Tuesday I was in Barre, VT with Elder Harper and Elder Wikan. Elder Wikan reminded me of Sheldon off of The Big Bang Theory. He acts just like him. He wants to be an astronomer. I learned so much from Elder Harper. He really taught me how to approach people on the street, and to really talk to everyone. He came in the same transfer as me.
On Wednesday and Thursday I was with Elder Knighton. One of the Zone Leaders in Essex Jct VT. I was a little disappointed because he did not talk to everyone, and we taught no lessons. We taught a crazy less active member though. He gave us some hot cross buns that "his mom had made." He had bought them at the grocery store. Later on he said that his mom was dead.
Both me and Elder Smith have decided to step up our
finding efforts. We have found that if we talk to everyone, then the
Lord blesses us with members that are willing to give us referrals and
to teach with us. A weekly goal that we have made is to talk to
everyone, and to work together. While Elder Smith is doing District
Leader business, I am writing down people to talk to in my planner.
We had an investigator, Doug that told us that his neighbors
thought he was crazy last summer because he raked his hay field by hand.
I couldnt believe that he raked his whole field with a leaf rake. I
wasnt too happy the other day. We have an investigator that doesnt like
having us in her house, so we went to the library to see if we could
teach her in a private study room. They told us due to the separation of
Church and State we could not teach her in the library. It looked like
they didnt even like us visiting with her in the library.
We had two investigators that made it to General Conference. Denise, and Carlee. Both were such a surprise. We hadnt seen Denise in over a week. We stopped by and asked if she was reading the Book of Mormon. She said that she hadnt. We asked her to read it and we invited her to go to General Conference. We were surprised when on Sunday she showed up. She enjoyed the talks about raising children. She really enjoyed hearing from President Thomas S. Monson, the prophet.
Carlee was an even
bigger miracle. On Thursday somebody had told her some false rumors
about Mormons. She texted us "I WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER FOLLOW SUCH
RULES, NEVER COME BY AGAIN." We convinced her to call us and we resolved
her concern. It was a really odd rumor. We told her it was wrong
and cleared up some other questions she had. We told her about
conference and invited her to come. She accepted and came to all four
sessions of conference. It was pretty cool.
Watching General Conference was interesting. On Sunday there were high winds and the power was out at the church. It came back on about an hour before it started. The power stayed on for the first session, but went out during the closing prayer. It stayed out so for the second session we had to go to Morrisville to watch it at a members home. On the way down there was a rollover. It wasnt too bad. A mother had gone off the road and rolled the vehicle. Her 15 month old was fine, but she had broken something. I guess accidents dont happen very much here because they sent 4 police cruisers, 3 ambulances, 3 fire pickup trucks, the tow truck and a road crew. They had the road blocked for about 20 minutes all for nothing. The car wasnt even on the road. It was interesting. We finally got to the members home. It was really good and Carlee really liked it. After the last session her daughter had a really high fever. We gave her a priesthood blessing and told her if she had faith that her fever would go down. The fever went down immediately after the blessing had been given. It was a good week.
Elder CW Jensen
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Investigators: People that we are teaching.
District Leaders: Missionaries in charge of around 3 companionships or 6 missionaries
Zone Leaders: Missionaries in charge of around 3 districts.
General Conference: A public meeting that the church holds 2 times a
year in which we get to hear from the prophet Thomas S. Monson, and the
twelve apostles, and other church leaders.